7 Reasons Why Manufacturers Add Sugar Here’s Why We Consume Too Much of It

Avoiding sugar in your diet is not as simple as it may seem. It’s not enough to look for the word ‘sugar’ on food product packages, although that’s also an important step. Manufacturers very often add simple sugars to products under other forms and names. Do they do it just to ‘confuse’ and ‘deceive’ you? Why is sugar essential in some products? Is glucose-fructose syrup really that much more harmful than sugar? Is sugar always sweet? Here are the answers to these and other questions about sugar in food products.

Why do manufacturers add sugar (or other similar ingredients) to food items? There are several reasons why it’s hard for manufacturers not to add sugar to food products. Here are some of them:

Consumers are used to sweet taste and they expect some foods to be sweet

The product label and ingredients are indeed important, but the critical thing that will make you either buy or leave a product is its taste. Manufacturers know this from frequent consumer surveys. The addition of sugar makes it easier to produce something that’s simply tasty. Humans are genetically wired to prefer savoury foods that are high in fats and sugars (carbohydrates). That’s why it’s easier for manufacturers to achieve the WOW taste using the simplest method: by combining sweet and fatty things.

Sweetness neutralises acidity and balances out spiciness and saltiness

The sweet taste, most easily obtained by adding some source of simple sugars, is also simply a purely technical cooking trick. Sugar is very often added to products with sour, salty or spicy flavours to balance the overall taste. When added in the right proportions, sugar and salt neutralise each other. You may completely fail to notice that a product is sweet or salty, while there’s plenty of salt and sugar in it. Canned beans in tomato sauce are a perfect example here. One can contains as much as 4 teaspoons of sugar and about a teaspoon of salt.

Sugar is also added to ketchup (as well as tomato sauces and tomato soup) to mellow out the acidity from tomatoes. In salad dressings and BBQ sauces, sugar adds dimension to flavour. There is also plenty of sugar in ready-made noodle sauces, especially the ‘sweet and sour’, ‘sweet chili’ or ‘sweet soy sauce’ kinds.

Sugar can be added to achieve the unique effect of caramelisation

Sometimes sugar is added to products not only to obtain a pure sweet taste, but to caramelise them. Caramel is added to light bread to make it darker (so that it appears to be healthier). Some kind of sugar is essential in meat marinades to achieve the characteristic brown crust or glaze. Sugar is also needed to make granola or cereal bars sticky (and seemingly very healthy).

Sugars act as a preservative

A high concentration of sugar inhibits bacterial growth. That’s why the easiest way to make preserves and juices at home is to add sugar. A sugar solution effectively inhibits the growth of most bacteria starting at the concentration of 25%. Because of that, for instance, uncontaminated natural honey will not go bad without pasteurisation, and fruit syrup will also last much longer after opening than fruit juice with a lower sugar content. Producers are eager to leverage the preservative properties of sugar, for example, to make candied fruits, help canned fruits in syrup last longer, or make jams and fruit preserves. Can these foods be made without added sugar? Of course they can, but this would be a bit more difficult and costly, which is why it’s not so popular.

Sugars (and sugar substitutes) give products the desired texture and consistency

Sugar, and especially its various substitutes and derivatives, are often used to lend the right texture and consistency to more sophisticated food products. For instance, sugar and syrups can be used in vegan meat substitutes to give them the desired texture, consistency and help achieve the umami taste.

Sugar, or more specifically its variety, maltodextrin, is a very common addition to ‘light’ products. As they are deprived of fat, which often gives them a characteristic semi-solid texture, they need something as a replacement. Maltodextrin is made up of about 10 molecules of simple sugars. It’s not sweet, but when mixed with water, it forms a sticky substance with a jelly-like consistency which thickens yoghurts, sauces, or creams. It can be used as a substitute for palm oil, for example. Although not sweet, maltodextrin is also a type of sugar that should be reduced.

Sugar and salt bump up product weight

One of the reasons why sugar and salt are added to products is also that they are cheap but heavy. With current sugar prices, this argument may seem obsolete. In the not so distant past, before careful reading of labels became popular, manufacturers used a mixture of salt and sugar in the right proportions to bump up product weight at little cost. At the same time, consumers found the taste more appealing.

Where is sugar hiding on food labels?

You already know that ‘sugar’ on food labels has many ‘nicknames’. If you seriously want to attempt to cut down on sugars, you need to understand how to find them in the maze of information on the label. Manufacturers know how to disguise it among the other ingredients. Don’t take a zero-one approach. You don’t need to reject every product that has any of the following ingredients. Here’s a guide to find out what’s behind the name ‘sugar’.

The most common sugar ‘nicknames’ on the label:

• Fructose/ lactose/ sucrose/ lactose/ maltose – these are specific isolated and labelled forms of sugar, we can say that they are clearly named.
• Beet/inverted/coconut/fruit/cane sugar: while some may associate these names with ‘healthier’ sugars, they are still sugars. Sugars that are a tad bit healthier and contain a few minerals.
• Glucose/glucose-fructose/corn/sucrose/maltose/inverted sugar syrup: all of them are liquid and even faster-absorbing varieties of sugar.
• Sugar beet/cane/carob molasses: waste from sugar production made up of water, sugars and minerals. In addition to pure carbohydrates, it also contains minerals, so molasses is a little ‘healthier’ than pure sugar, but it is still a source of sweet simple sugars.
• Concentrated apple juice/ concentrated grape juice – sugar isolated from fruit, but so heavily concentrated that it is mostly ‘pure sugar’ anyway. Don’t excuse yourself by saying it comes from healthy fruit after all, because it’s a highly concentrated source of sugar.
• Malt extract/ barley malt extract/ apple extract – extracts which contain mostly sugars, such as maltose, glucose and dextrin. They must be treated as sugars as well.

Not all of the substances mentioned here are equal, of course. However, each of them delivers added simple carbohydrates. The World Health Organisation recommends that each of them should be eliminated. Read labels carefully and you will realise how common they are within the ingredients of the products you buy.